The Stories We Tell Ourselves
Contents
- Other People
- You, the Narrator
- Just Kidding
- Competing Against the World
- Happiness is the Undefined Variable
- Main Takeaway
Other People
Many of us spend quite a lot of time idolizing other people. We look around and think “Wow, everyone is just so talented and here I am doing nothing. I have no talents, no hobbies, no interests, etc.”
These sorts of thoughts are everywhere. In fact they are so ubiquitous that they have now become a certified personality trait.
To be untalented is the new fad.
The shift from admiring excellence in others to the widespread acceptance of self deprecation has had various, drastic, unmeasurable effects.
Picture the amount of people who go through life “joking” about how untalented, unskilled, worthless, or simply mediocre they are.
Whether joking or humble bragging this sort of behavior is mentally abusive to you or to those around you.
At this point it would not be a stretch to suggest that the population of people who succumb to these dark impulses is in the hundreds of millions.
You, the Narrator
The voice in our head is simply a combination of our conscious and unconscious minds. As humans we seek various ways of understanding the world and, as it so happens, story telling is one of the most convenient methods we have of doing this.
The moment we are born we are blasted with narratives of how and why things are.
We tell babies that “I am Mama, that is Papa, and this is Banana.”
Sure, these examples aren’t complex but they are stories nonetheless. They come to form a model of the world we inhabit.
Over time we understand how these different narratives interact, how these smaller worlds, or microcosms, form part of the larger, more intricate world.
With age we become more skilled at creating these stories. They become more convincing and at some point irrefutable.
In many ways they become mystic legends in our own mind.
Evidence to the contrary is swiftly swept under the rug. We grapple with incorporating this new information of shutting it out. We have to make a decision between following the official narrative or discovering an alternative way of thought.
Given this context we can simply think of our thoughts as narratives. When we talk to ourselves we are doing nothing more than crafting a story and a compelling one at that.
The stories inside control the outside.
Just Kidding
Joking is one thing but making the same joke over and over is to cement and identity. Do this sort of thing once and you made a funny. Do it time and time again and you are on track to create a powerful feedback loop, one which gets worse the longer it continues.
Tell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.
More than anything, self destructive thoughts erode our initial self image and replace it with a caricature of our true selves.
Left unabated this sort of inner monologue is reinforced by real world actions.
We stop doing the things we love because “they” are so much better at it, because “they” have much the best gear, or, worst of all, because “they” are so talented.
Our thinking dictates our future.
Competing Against the World
The digital age has given us unprecedented and unfettered access to the world’s best of anything imaginable. If something is good chances are that you can find it on the internet: watched, shared, and liked, millions (and in some cases billions) of times.
It’s not rare to watch a video and come away feeling inspired only to settle back into a familiar mode of complacency and self loathing. Instead of being fueled by this content the vast majority of us convince ourselves that simply consuming is enough and that we rather sit on the sidelines watching other people do the stuff we wish we could do.
This sort of phenomena makes sense when you consider that meaningful social interaction has been replaced by a numbers game that leaves us feeling like an insignificant specks in infinite sea of talent.
The amount of subscribers and followers, views and retweets, are all status signals shouting “Hey this catches the attention of a lot of people.”
Are brains, being social creatures, interpret this as “Oh no, other people like this person about a million times more than they like me. I must really suck at life.”
This is the entirely wrong way of looking at it.
We need to silence the voices that say we aren’t good enough, including and especially our own.
Happiness is the Undefined Variable
By judging ourselves based on those around us we become out of touch with our own sense of being. Our thoughts and ambitions are not ours. Instead they are some other standards, some other measuring sticks with which to assess our standing in life.
We chase status, money, influence, and power all in name of attaining happiness. Some of us are starting to realize how other people’s definitions of success are wildly inept at capturing what it means to be human.
We find that these desperate attempts to capture the essence of happiness fall short.
My intuition is that all external definitions for happiness will fail to make us happy.
Happiness is not one size fits all. It must come from within.
In this space of the human experience you are the doctor. You must, through trial and error, prescribe your own medicine, therapy, or procedure.
As hard as it may be we need to take a moment to step back and wake ourselves up.
Why are we doing what we do?
What is the point of it?
Why that goal?
Who’s goal is it really?
I ask myself these questions every single day and I am still struggling to find a suitable answer.
I think it probable that this answer won’t come to me all at once but is rather an intricate puzzle that will take many years to decode.
Bit by bit I will gain a better idea of what it all means and maybe someday I’ll see the picture in full.
Main Takeaway
Realizing is one thing but believing is another.
If we tell constantly tell ourselves negative stories we will fill the character roles that we assign ourselves. We take on the negative attributes of this faulty self image and become the person we never wanted to be in the first place.
We must shift the focus from “not being…” to what we actually are. Only trough an accuracte image of ourselves can we find a way towards progress.
The mind will believe the story you tell it.
I hope you found this useful. Let me know by sending me a message on any of my profiles found here: @axelian
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This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered Legal Advice. Please consult a professional before making any major decisions.
